A doctor at a children's hospital where thousands of organs were stockpiled by a maverick pathologist failed to intervene when presented with early evidence of the scandal, the General Medical Council was told yesterday.

Research into cures for children's cancers is being set back by parents' unwillingness to allow small tissue samples from tumours to be stored for future study and doctors' reluctance to ask them, according to a leading cancer charity.

The parents of a baby boy who had
just died were not told the truth over
what a postmortem examination
would involve and the possible
retention of the child's organs, the
General Medical Council heard today.

The spectre of the organ retention scandal returned to Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool yesterday when the parents of a boy who died there claimed that his organs had been kept without their permission.

The University of Liverpool has been formally brought into the legal action in which parents are seeking compensation from Alder Hey hospital, where thousands of organs were removed from the bodies of children without consent.

Gunther von Hagens' macabre exhibition has shocked and fascinated millions of people around the world, and now it has arrived in London. The German scientist tells Stuart Jeffries how his displays of real corpses can help us to understand ourselves - and why he invited the Alder Hey parents to see his work.